The Fortnite map for season 10 didn’t change

September 4, 2019

We’ve got a content patch here in Fortnite: Battle Royale, and like the rest of the content patches here in Season 10 it comes with some big map changes and an interesting new item. The map is shifting at a rapid pace this season, with new areas every week, even if they’re just from past seasons save Tilted Town and Pandora: I suspect that the team already had Tilted Town as an unused POI from the early days of the desert biome, however. It’s a fun way to keep us on our toes, though it has us all sort of waiting around to wonder what’s next. Let’s get into the patch notes from content update v10.20.

First up, we’ve got the return of the Floating Island, which was one of the more interesting POIs when it first showed up and remains so today. For a little bit of history: Kevin the Cube spent the latter half of Season 5 bouncing around the map creating low-gravity areas before eventually melting into Loot Lake, where he spread his pernicious purple goo through what was at the time a much more uniform body of water. At the beginning of Season 6, he returned stronger than ever, raising the island at the center above the lake itself and creating a vortex below: later on, the island traveled around the map spreading corruption wherever he went. And now he’s back! I love this place because it functions more or less like a normal POI except for the fact that it’s floating above the map, allowing both for recognizable gameplay and some weird, elevated action. It’s sort of like a sky platform on steroids.

Next up, we’ve got the zapper trap. This thing seems like the spike trap in a lot of ways, in that it deals damage to a player standing in front of it. But the difference here is that it can fire on both sides of a wall, making it an interesting tactical weapon that could well become one of the most powerful short-range offenses in the game. v buck generator We see a lot of instances where players trade firepower on either side of a wall in this game, and a zapper trap could affect the balance of such encounters in interesting ways.

There are limitations, of course: it takes one second to power up, so it can’t be used for instant kills. It also only does 50 damage, so it’s not nearly as powerful as the spike trap. This is a tactical positioning item that will force players to relocate lest they get fried, and I’m all for items that shake-up stalemates in slightly less dramatic fashion than say, the Junk Rift. We’ll see how it works when people get a chance to play around with it.